Need Help For Graphic Card Quickly!

[FireWienie]

As some of you know I'm deciding to upgrade my PC, but my previous question wasn't answered. So I'll go more into detail. These are the things I have...

 

I have: A power supply of 280 W

           A Lenovo ThinkCentre m57 (small tower)

           2 PCIe slots and 1 PCI slot

 

The things I need are quite simple. I need a graphic card that has:

 

Low profile and can be used on a small computer with not as much of a power supply as modern day computers

Atleast 512 MB vram

Must not exceed 50 Dollars

A PCIe graphic card

It must have atleast 3.0 version of shaders (vertex and pixel)

 

Basically it does NOT HAVE TO BE GOOD, AS LONG AS IT RUNS COD4 AND DECENT GAMES!      <<<<<<<<<<<<<

 

I'm looking for a graphic card that can run Mirror's Edge, CrossFire, Cod4, Cod6, and a couple of old-modern games.

 

I'm glad for all the people who want to help me. Just remember it must be Low Profile and able to run decent games. Here is an example of one that I found.

 

http://www.amazon.co...9ZVRXET45NMMEBK

 

It's a decent graphic card but unfortunately it is not Low Profile. 

 

Thanks to anyone who wastes their time to help a noob like me ^^

[Xernicus]

The one you linked to *is* low profile. You remove the VGA port, and replace the bracket. That's how you change a card from full height to low profile.

Here's some more cards that are within the $50 price range. The only question I have is whether that $50 includes tax and shipping... or is your $50 limit on the card itself (allowing for the total cost to come to ($55-60)?

http://www.amazon.com/XFX-Radeon-PCI-Express-Video--XFX1-DLX2/dp/B008N1DU8W/ref=sr_1_32?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1432091695&sr=1-32
http://www.amazon.com/Asus-Radeon-Silence-Profile-PCI-Express/dp/B004X8EO6Q/ref=sr_1_5?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1432091556&sr=1-5
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GeForce-PCI-Express-Graphics-GV-N610D3-2GI/dp/B00963S3QK/ref=sr_1_24?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1432091556&sr=1-24

I have put these in workstations for CAD work in the past, they overclock well, and handle videos and whatnot like a champ (or seemingly so)
http://www.amazon.com/SILENT-EAH5450-DI-1GD3-LP/dp/B004U4WYLU/ref=sr_1_46?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1432091695&sr=1-46

Like I said before, I heard about troubles with your BIOS and AMD Radeon cards, but I wasn't able to get a concrete answer- and it seems like bunk to me, to be honest. It's not a CPU upgrade or anything that depends on the chipset. It's up to you whether or not you want to play the silicon lottery though.

[FireWienie]

Yeah I've realized upgrading this computer is really just a huge bet and I won't be sure until I actually get the graphics card I ordered. That's why I'm trying to be as specific as possible and I'm trying to make the graphics card as old as possible so it has a higher chance of being compatible with my crappy toaster. For Mirror's Edge, "System Requirement Lab" said the minimum graphic card I would need is a GeForce 6800. I searched them up and they seem pretty old but the one I saw was out of stock, while another one was about 150 dollars, which seemed a bit too overpriced for a graphic card that can run Mirror's Edge at low settings. 

 

The price range can exceed 50 dollars by a bit, tax and shipping doesn't matter. I'm just planning on buying a new gaming mouse (the scroll wheel on my broke >.> ) and CS:GO. Also I might buy a hard drive because my computer has very limited space at this moment (15 GB) because my hard drive can hold about 80 GB max.

 

Both the links to those Asus graphics cards seem pretty good and I might just do some more research on them. 

 

If you find anymore that have a similar or maybe even a better chance of running on this computer, please post them. I found some from another forum that a friend told me about. These graphic cards are pretty good and apparently they have a high chance of being used on this computer, but the Zotac might be a bit too tall while the MSI might be a bit too thick. I'll post the link so I can see your oppinion

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133542

 

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500343CVF

 

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Computer-Graphic-N730K-1GD5LP-OC/dp/B00N802PC0

 

They do exceed the 50 dollar limit, but if I have no other choice I might just buy them, I'll still have enough money for a mouse and cs:go, but not the hard drive.

 

I forgot to mention that for CrossFire the minimum requirements needed to run the game can be found on a graphic card called the GeForce 5600. I looked at the review but the costumers had old computers and Windows XP. Another guy said he was forced to get Windows Vista, so I'm not sure about this one, but it is pretty old and it can run pretty old games at minimum settings,

Edited May 20, 2015 by FireWienie

[Xernicus]

I can't say that age is your limiting factor... To a degree yes, with the PCIe bus and chipset of your motherboard, but I did read success stories of Nvidia GeForce GT 620's working with your computer. (And as I see, you're looking at cards newer than that)

 

Out of those cards, I'd say two of them could be worth trying: The PNY and MSI cards. The reason for this is the GDDR5 memory. It is far superior to DDR3 on a GPU. The MSI does look like it might be 1.5 slots wide on the cooler, though comes with a slightly faster core clock. However, you can probably overclock the PNY if you decide to get a higher wattage PSU in the future. It might also take a little less power (probably an insignificant amount).

 

This may or may not be useful, but for comparision I owned a 2GB (DDR3) Sapphire AMD Radeon 6570, and here's the games that I can cross reference performance for:

 

Mirror's Edge - Ran perfectly fine. AFAIK the graphics were on High or Ultra too.

CrossFire- Dunno, but judging by the age, it should run well

COD4 - Dunno, once again... by age it should run well.

COD6- Ditto. Should run fine.

Minecraft - Got something like 70 FPS Vanilla. Installed OptiFine and chose Soartex Fanver for my texture pack and framerate was at 125FPS while walking, and around 90-70 while raining.

ET - Had high graphics cvars with 76FPS maxfps rock solid. 125 was also good- no lag. /r_primitives 2 was set.

IDK if you own it, But Crysis 2 ran quite well on it with medium or high graphics too, in addition.

 

If you research that card (was also interchangeable to a low-profile) you can look at comparable cards. Mine overclocked well (was maxed out in Overdrive the entire time I owned it), so I'd say it's reasonable to say the card is good for that itself... but I might just be good with playing the silicon lottery. Dunno.

 

I can't recommend it to you though, because it wants a 400W PSU. A 350W PSU might work, but you'd want a Tier 2 or 3 quality. Anyways, TL;DR: It's too power hungry.

Edited May 20, 2015 by Xernicus

[FireWienie]

Haha, that seems like a pretty good graphics card, yet I only have 280 W, not even close to atleast 350. I've read that a couple of graphics cards that use about 25-30W we able to run old-modern games like Cod4, etc. I'll look for it cuz I remember seeing it but dont remember what site it was on. Ill update in a bit

[FireWienie]

Update: I found out the GeForce 8400 is able to run on a 220 W system, proof from this forum:

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/294297-33-geforce-8400-watt-system

 

Also another person with a 220 W system is able to use a Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 1GB on the exact same link given. Do you think this would be a good idea to try?

[Xernicus]

The Radeon 5450 is going to better performing than the 8400(GS). Hell, even a 45xx is superior to that thing. That said I suppose it's not that bad after being used to integrated graphics, but I'd never go back to it. I didn't really game much when I used that card as my daily driver, but it ran UrbanTerror just fine...

Now with that said, XFX has an R7 250 that is Low Profile compatible, and two reviewers on Amazon said that the card ran great in their 220w systems. http://www.amazon.com/XFX-1050MHz-Profile-Brackets-R7-250A-CLF4/dp/B00H5DJDL2

This card is DDR3, but I wasn't putting 2 and 2 together all the way... That is, I wasn't considering the power draw of GDDR5 vs the power sip of DDR3. So you might not be able to use a GDDR5 card reliably in your system. I'd have to do more research (power consumption has never really been a limiting factor for me), but the initial reading that I've done leaves me in doubt.

[FireWienie]

Power consumption doesn't really seem like the problem, it's more like the size of my computer because it's a small tower. Now I know I will sound like a noob after saying this, but do you mine explaining what DDR3 and GDDR5 is, it's pretty new to me because this is the first time I've ever upgraded a PC, especially the graphics card.

 

Also I read the reviews on the amazon site AND I AM SO FREAKEN HAPPY BECAUSE THAT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE THE ANSWER TO MY QUESTION! I searched up images of the Dell 660s on images, showing the size difference between an average sized keyboard to the Dell 660s

 

Okay so here are the sizes I found on the internet, Lenovo vs Dell

 

Lenovo (W x D x H): 99mm (9.9 cm) x 341mm (34.1cm) x 317mm (31.7cm)                 

 

Dell (W x D x H): 100mm (10cm) x 375.9mm (37.59cm) x 271mm (27.1 cm)

 

So they are both roughly the same size, the Lenovo bigger than the Dell on some places while the Dell is bigger than the Lenovo on others.

 

It's a shame the graphic card is really expensive, on amazon.ca they are selling one for 131 dollars (canadian money) while the one you sent me was in US currency, which would be converted to about 106 dollars of canadian currency 

[Xernicus]

I guess I missed the email notification, whoopsies. Sorry about the wait.

So here's the thing with GDDR5. The primary bonus is that it's faster. It has higher bandwidth, uses less lanes (64-bit vs 128-bit) on the bus... the overall performance increase in the memory clock and the bandwidth throughput would be around 200-300%.

As long as your case can handle the heat dissipation of the card you put in there, it does not matter how big the case is. You'll run into power constrictions long before you'll run out of low profile cards to choose from.

The R7 250 that I linked to often sells for that price. I think I paid about $100 USD for mine... if I can find the receipt. Although newer cards can be anywhere from 25% to 100% (double the price) more expensive than older generations, it actually saves you money in the long haul.

 

I'm going to use my old 6570 as an example once again... It was released in 2011 or something like that, and it could play 2011 era games just fine on Medium or High settings. Play a game from 2013 or 2014 and the card began to choke. So unless you're adamant that you won't be expanding your collection of games with newer releases, going with a 4-6 year old card is basically akin shooting yourself in the foot.

There's another issue at hand too, and that's the graphics API that the games take. For example, Minecraft and ET reply on OpenGL. Other games rely on DirectX, PhysX, Mantle, etc. Now I haven't experienced this so much with AMD cards, but quite a few Nvidia cards that I have used have been limited to ancient (or at least old) OpenGL versions because of incompatible hardware with their newer driver. On the other hand, AMD has a better track record of keeping cards supported (at least in my book), offering OpenGL compatibility through driver updates even for the older cards.

But TL;DR on that last paragraph: OpenGL, DirectX, and all of those APIs are hardware based. So if your card is beyond a certain age, no matter how good or equivalent the specs are, some games just simply won't play.

[FireWienie]

I guess I missed the email notification, whoopsies. Sorry about the wait.

 

So here's the thing with GDDR5. The primary bonus is that it's faster. It has higher bandwidth, uses less lanes (64-bit vs 128-bit) on the bus... the overall performance increase in the memory clock and the bandwidth throughput would be around 200-300%.

 

As long as your case can handle the heat dissipation of the card you put in there, it does not matter how big the case is. You'll run into power constrictions long before you'll run out of low profile cards to choose from.

 

The R7 250 that I linked to often sells for that price. I think I paid about $100 USD for mine... if I can find the receipt. Although newer cards can be anywhere from 25% to 100% (double the price) more expensive than older generations, it actually saves you money in the long haul.

 

I'm going to use my old 6570 as an example once again... It was released in 2011 or something like that, and it could play 2011 era games just fine on Medium or High settings. Play a game from 2013 or 2014 and the card began to choke. So unless you're adamant that you won't be expanding your collection of games with newer releases, going with a 4-6 year old card is basically akin shooting yourself in the foot.

 

There's another issue at hand too, and that's the graphics API that the games take. For example, Minecraft and ET reply on OpenGL. Other games rely on DirectX, PhysX, Mantle, etc. Now I haven't experienced this so much with AMD cards, but quite a few Nvidia cards that I have used have been limited to ancient (or at least old) OpenGL versions because of incompatible hardware with their newer driver. On the other hand, AMD has a better track record of keeping cards supported (at least in my book), offering OpenGL compatibility through driver updates even for the older cards.

 

But TL;DR on that last paragraph: OpenGL, DirectX, and all of those APIs are hardware based. So if your card is beyond a certain age, no matter how good or equivalent the specs are, some games just simply won't play.

Thanks for the info, I'll be looking for more information about these graphic cards later. I'm still going to most probably buy the XFX because it pretty much has the proof that tells me my computer will be able to run it. It may be expensive but it's my best shot for now. Unfortunately my father says we are tight with money at this moment so for now I won't be able to buy it. Maybe I'll just buy the gaming mouse I was talking about buying because it's only 20 dollars. Also I might save up even more money to build a 300 dollar computer form this youtube link. It seems pretty interesting and it fits well with the amount of money I have.

 

[Vanaraud]

Only component prices:

r7 240 prices starting at 64$: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=r7+240&N=-1&isNodeId=1

g3258 70$: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=g3258&N=100007671&isNodeId=1

135€ in total

For same price: A10- 7850k: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113359&cm_re=a10-7850k-_-19-113-359-_-Product

 

Performance is at same level on G3258+r7 240 or A10-7850K APU: http://www.techspot.com/review/781-amd-a10-7850k-graphics-performance/page5.html

That means theres barely any FPS, whilst r7 240 vs HD6950 and HD7850 which should cost in aftermarket around 60$ or even less:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2013-vga-gpgpu/compare,2947.html?prod[5381]=on&prod[5398]=on&prod[6418]=on

 

1)So as I mentioned in last post, hunt for quality aftermarket parts like: ATX case(15$ max), at least 500W PSU(Chieftec 750W should sell less than 30$) and HD 6950 or equivalent GPU: 110$, new CPU 70$+ mobo as much+ DDR3 as much: 210$. Should end up with PC capable to play at least on medium(-high) with 300$ in total.

2)Or get a PC with that APU(CPU is as good as G3258), play as long as you´d gather 60$ for decent aftermarket GPU.

3) Search for aftermarket PC-s, lots of gamers should sell their "junk" for GTA V for about 300$.

 

To me it seems waste of money to buy less than r7 250(x).

 

Also it seems to me pointless to build yet another mATX PC, which limits upgrade options...

 

1) Seems to me a best option as it can be upgraded with at least i5 with 4-cores later, which will be enough for quite a while.  Also cutting here and there, a HDD can be fit in this budget.

 

Main point being still not going for cheapo LP ITX standard, which can´t be ugraded in future.

 

(I mentioned Chieftec 750W (cs14 it was?) because I sold 1 after 2-3y of working and 1 is still providing power on my brothers PC ).

[FireWienie]

I'm not looking forward to upgrading in the future, just this moment. Infact if I were to upgrade again I would buy a brand new computer and get rid of this toaster asap, I'm just low on money atm